***
a sermon preached by the Rev. Dr. Tim W. Jensen
at the First Parish Church in Portland, Maine
Sunday February 8th, 2009
OPENING WORDS: The eye is the first circle; the horizon which it forms is the second; and throughout nature this primary picture is repeated without end. It is the highest emblem in the cipher of the world. St. Augustine described the nature of God as a circle whose centre was everywhere and its circumference nowhere. We are all our lifetime reading the copious sense of this first of forms. One moral we have already deduced in considering the circular or compensatory character of every human action. Another analogy we shall now trace, that every action admits of being outdone. Our life is an apprenticeship to the truth that around every circle another can be drawn; that there is no end in nature, but every end is a beginning; that there is always another dawn risen on mid-noon, and under every deep a lower deep opens.... --Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Circles”
***
A Unitarian from California went up to a hot dog vender in New York’s Central Park and said “Gimmie a Zen Dog.”
“A Zen Dog?” said the New Yorker. “Never heard of it.”
“You know,” said the Californian. “Make me one with everything....”
Today's Sermon is the third in a series of five sermons I’m preaching between now and Easter entitled “UU-DNA,” because they deal with topics which are so basic and ubiquitous about who we are that they can almost be thought of as part of our genome, or genetic make-up. Today’s topic in particular resides right at the heart of our identity as people of faith, and is even listed in the hymnbook at the First Source of our shared “Living Tradition:” “Direct experience of that transcending mystery and wonder, affirmed in all cultures, which moves us to a renewal of the spirit and an openness to the forces that create and uphold life.” These particular words were drafted by a committee over the course of a four-year period between 1981 and 1985, when they were formally adopted by the General Assembly , along with the rest of the statement to which they belong, as part of the preamble to the by-laws of the Unitarian Universalist Association.
On the other hand, the title that I’ve chosen for my sermon today, “Mystics, Skeptics, and Dyspeptics,” has a somewhat different history. This particular phrase belongs to the Rev. John Gorham Palfrey, who served as the Dean of the Harvard Divinity School from 1831-1840, and who used these words to describe the students who attended that institution during what was doubtlessly one of the most tumultuous decades in its history, since it corresponded with both the publication of “Nature” and Emerson’s “Divinity School Address,” Theodore Parker’s famous “South Boston” sermon, and the “explosion” of Transcendentalism as both a literary and a religious movement in New England.
“Mystics, Skeptics, and Dyspeptics.” I don’t think it was intended as a compliment. And yet, in many ways, Palfrey had (and still has) it exactly right. The mystical part is easy. We don’t typically think of Unitarian Universalism as a “mystical” faith -- we are much more likely to describe it as a “Rational” Religion, a religion based on Freedom, Reason, and Tolerance; even a “scientific” faith which has for centuries placed it’s trust in “natural theology” (which is to say, observation of the physical universe) rather than revelation, and where science trumps scripture practically every time...at least on points of material “Fact.”
But “truth” is often something more than just the facts. The REAL source of religious authority in Unitarian Universalism is neither science or revelation, but rather personal experience, which leads us to several interesting insights about who we are. To begin with, Unitarian Universalists are NOT people who are free to believe whatever we wish. We are people who are COMPELLED to believe what our Reason and our Experience tell us to be true. Second, because we are only human, none of us are ever going to know the truth perfectly -- we are always developing in our understanding, as our experience grows and our wisdom and understanding grow along with it. And finally (at least for now) what is true for us as individuals is true for us as a society and as a species as well. It’s not that “truth” itself is relative; the TRUTH (in bold, capital letters), is what it is, and is going to be true whether we choose to believe it or not. But again, our UNDERSTANDING of the Truth grows and evolves over time as we ourselves grow and evolve, and it will continue to do so until that as yet unimaginable day when we too, like the God of Christian Theology, are Omniscient/All-Knowing. That is, assuming our minds are even equal to the task. It’s certainly not something I see happening any time soon.
But not all of our knowledge is rational and analytical. Some of it is emotional, some of it intuitive, and a great deal of it (especially when it comes to matters of spirituality) comes in the form of what Scientists often label as “Peak Experiences” -- well-documented episodes of mystical insight in which individuals typically feel in a very profound and visceral way that we are very, very small creatures in a vastly large Universe, whole within ourselves, yet intimately connected to ALL THAT IS, to everyone and everything that ever was, or is, or ever will be. It’s the kind of powerful insight that we associate with great truths like “God is One” (yet more mysterious than we will ever fully understand), and that all human beings are both children of the Creator, and brothers and sisters to one another.
Peak Experiences (at least in our culture) are often associated with nature (like Emerson’s transformation into Transparent Eyeball), yet they are also often associated with other spiritual disciplines like meditation or fasting, and sometimes even happen spontaneously and without much warning. We see examples in things like Jesus’s baptism in the River Jordon and subsequent 40 day fast in the wilderness, or in the Buddha’s prolonged, pre-enlightenment meditation beneath the Bo Tree. And yes, they can also sometimes seem a little silly or even ridiculous to the outsider. Transcendentalist Margaret Fuller is said to have once proclaimed in a moment of mystical insight “I Accept the Universe,” to which the poet Thomas Carlyle responded when he heard “Gad, She’d better.” And Transcendentalist bookseller Elizabeth Peabody was briefly the laughing stock of Boston when, while walking across the Boston Common deep in contemplation, she walked head-first into a tree. “Didn’t you see it?” one of her companions asked? “I saw it,” Peabody replied, “but I did not realize it” -- in other words, the mental act of noticing the tree had not quite made its way all the way into her conscious awareness.
The insights of mystics can often seem silly or obvious in this way. But they also provide the foundation for some of the most profoundly important eternal truths which exist at the heart of every authentic religious tradition. The logic of doing unto others as we would have others do unto us, and loving our neighbors as ourselves, may seem obvious enough in the abstract, despite the constant temptation to ignore the other guy and look out first for number one. But things like the Golden Rule take on a far more compelling importance when you have actually FELT that experience of common humanity and universal connectedness in a way so powerful that you can’t quite put it into words.
And yet, it is this same compelling power of the Peak Experience that also brings us to the “Skeptical” part of our formula. I mean, let’s face facts: we can’t always believe everything God tells us. That little voice one might sometimes hear whispering in their ear, telling them to shave their head, tattoo their body from head to toe, and to move to Borneo to enlighten the few surviving headhunters there about the dangers of global warming and the benefits of a Vegan diet may well belong to one of God’s angels, but before you go on-line to start shopping for cheap airfares it probably couldn’t hurt to go through a fairly rigorous period of critical discernment. Even our most cherished beliefs must be able to stand the test of this kind of scrutiny, to be spread out in all their detail under the cold, harsh light of Skeptical examination., and still hold enough water to at least quench our thirst afterwards.
Covenant Groups, like the ones we’re gearing up to launch again in the next month or so, are the perfect kind of forum for this sort of dialog to happen. A Covenant Group is such a simple program it hardly needs explaining, but let me go ahead and describe one anyway. Optimally consisting of between 8 to 12 people, Covenant Groups meet either once or twice a month, typically in somebody’s home, for a minimum of an hour and a half. There are no refreshments served, or anything like that...although sometimes the host will have available a little something to nosh on AFTER the group is over. But the focus is on being together intentionally, WITHOUT the distractions of a typical social gathering.
The meeting begins with the participants sitting in a circle, facing one another around a chalice (which is why they are sometimes called “Chalice Circles”). There’s an opening reading, and somebody lights the chalice, ushering the group into sacred space. The next thing that happens is the “Check-in” -- not the relatively brief and perfunctory check-ins we sometimes experience at the beginning of our board and committee meetings, but a “deep Check-in” of perhaps five to ten minutes per person, during which each participant has the opportunity to share in a profound and authentic way what is happening in their lives. Of course, it takes time to build up the level of trust in which that depth of sharing can truly happen. But this is also part of the on-going Covenant Group experience, of meeting together with the same group of people over a period of months or even years.
Following the Check-in comes the topical discussion, which usually consists of a series of open-ended questions and perhaps another reading or two. Ideally, the discussion is lead by a trained group facilitator, who is both familiar with the process and the content of the session, and who understands how to draw the group out and help them engage in the discussion. In groups that only meet once a month, these topics are often selected by the team of facilitators in advance, so that every Covenant Group in the church has the opportunity to discuss the same topic, not only among themselves but informally with the members of other groups; in fact, they may even hear a sermon on the topic as well. Groups that meet twice a month will typically choose the second topic themselves, either out of the literally thousands of prepared sessions that are now available, or else one or two people writing up the session themselves. Finally, the group ends with a brief “Check-out” of likes and wishes -- one sentence each about what you thought went well, and what you would have like to have seen go differently, regarding the session just completed. A few closing words to extinguish the Chalice, and the session is over...at least until the next time.
And that is a Covenant Group: simplicity itself. But where does the Covenant part come in? First, in the commitment to regular attendance. The entire group depends upon the participation of each of its members in order for the group to function. We all have times when we can’t make it to an obligation. But don’t sign up for a Covenant Group unless its at a time when you know you can attend, and you fully intend to attend each and every session offered.
The second commitment is obviously one of confidentiality. It’s OK to talk about the topic outside of the group; in fact, it’s encouraged. But don’t gossip about the confidential things that people share during Check-in, or even about individual opinions (other than your own) regarding the topic of the group discussion. Like I said earlier, it takes time to build up a level of trust that will allow the group to function at it’s optimal level, and that trust can quickly be destroyed by just a few careless remarks. So Confidentiality is a second element of the covenant, perhaps even a more important one than the Commitment to Attend.
And then finally, in many churches there is typically an annual service component, as a group, both within the congregation and beyond it. This is important simply as a reminder that each group is indeed connected to the larger church community, and to the community beyond that which we serve as well.
So, Mysticism, Skepticism, and now the one you’ve all been waiting for: Dyspepsia. This may seem a little tongue in cheek, but lets face it: there are just some things most Unitarian Universalists simply can’t swallow. We don’t like things being force-fed to us (much less being shoved down our throats); and there are lots of things as well that leave a bad taste in our mouths, or maybe even leave us feeling a little sick to our stomachs. And if this makes us “Dyspeptics,” why is that such a bad thing? The fact that we are sometimes willing to trust our gut feelings, both in terms of what we like and what we don’t like, is a powerful compliment both to our occasionally TOO rigorous intellectual skepticism, and the kind of deep and profound mystical wonder that resides at the heart of our faith tradition, no matter how well we may try to hide it.
Humility, Awe, Gratitude, Compassion, Fascination, Curiosity, Devotion, Love... Unitarian Universalists certainly don’t have a monopoly on these qualities; in fact, just the opposite; it is our willing recognition that these are Universal qualities that Transcend the boundaries of culture and tradition, that make us almost unique among the major faith traditions of the world. We are proud of our Living Tradition, because it is a Growing Tradition, which allows us to look beyond it for additional sources of Hope, Encouragement, and Inspiration, without ever diminishing the power of its original insights or underlying principles.
“Praise the source of faith and learning, that has sparked and stoked the mind, with a passion for discerning how the world has been designed. Let the sense of wonder flowing from the wonders we survey, keep our faith forever growing, and renew our need to pray....”
Our closing hymn is number 158 - “Praise the Source of Faith and Learning....”
READING: from Nature by Ralph Waldo Emerson (1836) [adapted]
To speak truly, few adult persons can see nature. Most persons do not see the sun. At least they have a very superficial seeing. The sun illuminates only the eye of the [adult], but shines into the eye and the heart of the child. The lover of nature is [one] whose inward and outward senses are still truly adjusted to each other; who has retained the spirit of infancy even into the era of [adulthood]. [Their] intercourse with heaven and earth, becomes part of [their] daily food. In the presence of nature, a wild delight runs through [them], in spite of real sorrows.... Nature is a setting that fits equally well a comic or a mourning piece. In good health, the air is a cordial of incredible virtue. Crossing a bare common, in snow puddles, at twilight, under a clouded sky, without having in my thoughts any occurrence of special good fortune, I have enjoyed a perfect exhilaration. I am glad to the brink of fear. In the woods too, [one] casts off [their] years, as the snake [its skin], and at what period soever of life, is always a child. In the woods, is perpetual youth. Within these plantations of God, a decorum and sanctity reign, a perennial festival is dressed, and the guest sees not how [they] should tire of them in a thousand years. In the woods, we return to reason and faith. There I feel that nothing can befall me in life, -- no disgrace, no calamity, (leaving me my eyes,) which nature cannot repair. Standing on the bare ground, -- my head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite space, -- all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eye-ball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or particle of God. The name of the nearest friend sounds then foreign and accidental: to be brothers, to be acquaintances, -- master or servant, is then a trifle and a disturbance. I am the lover of uncontained and immortal beauty. In the wilderness, I find something more dear and connate than in streets or villages. In the tranquil landscape, and especially in the distant line of the horizon, [one] beholds somewhat as beautiful as [their] own nature.
Sunday, February 8, 2009
Sunday, February 1, 2009
AFFLICTIVE DISPENSATIONS OF DIVINE PROVIDENCE
a sermon preached by the Rev. Dr. Tim W. Jensen
at the First Parish Church in Portland, Maine
Sunday February 1st, 2009
OPENING WORDS: from "Of Justice and Conscience” by Theodore Parker
I do not pretend to understand the moral universe; the arc is a long one, my eye reaches but little ways; I cannot calculate the curve and complete the figure by the experience of sight; I can divine it by conscience. And from what I see I am sure it bends towards justice.
***
It’s nice to be back in the pulpit again though, especially after having to ask Will to fill in for me last Sunday, but cause I’d been afflicted earlier in the week with a particularly nasty case of the, the type of which one immediately begins to suppress ones memory of all of the symptoms in hopes of never having to experience them again. And even though I was feeling a lot better by the time Sunday finally rolled around, it still felt reassuring to know that I could call on Will, and still have the opportunity to worship along with everyone else as a member of the congregation, and to hear his thoughts on a topic that has also been of interest to me for a long, long time.
It was particularly interesting to me because of the way Will chose to introduce it. In 1978, shortly after arriving on the East Coast to begin my theological studies at the Harvard Divinity School, I got a part-time job as a Field Education Student Intern at the First and Second Church in Boston’s Back Bay. There were actually several of us student interns at First and Second, not only from Harvard but from other Divinity Schools in the Boston area, and it wasn’t long before we were looking around for a nice, quiet place there in the neighborhood where we might stop and get a drink before catching the subway back to Cambridge, or to Newton Centre or wherever else we might happen to be going. And we eventually settled on a place called “the Bull and Finch,” right there on Beacon Street at the foot of Beacon Hill, and for the next three years that was pretty much our regular hangout whenever we wanted a cold bear at the end of a long day (or maybe a hot Irish Coffee at the end of a very COLD day)....
So imagine my astonishment in 1982, having moved back to Seattle only a year after my graduation and ordination, to discover that my sleepy little neighborhood bar was suddenly the setting of the most popular television program in America! And it only gets stranger. Because ten years later “Cheers” spun-off another series about one of its regular characters, Dr. Frazier Crane, who moves from Boston back to his hometown of Seattle in order to begin a new career as a radio talk-show personality. Frazier and his brother Niles like to meet up at a place called the Cafe Nervosa, a place which looks suspiciously like the basement espresso bar at the Elliott Bay bookstore in Pioneer square, which is one of my favorite SEATTLE hangouts!
Thankfully, they’ve done a little bit better job at avoiding the temptation to try to cash in than the Bull and Finch people did. Still, it’s a little eerie to feel like you’re being stalked cross-country by a Hollywood location scout, especially given the coincidence that one of the OTHER most popular television programs in America that season, “Northern Exposure,” was also being filmed in the Pacific Northwest, in the small town of Roslyn Washington, home of the “Brick” -- Washington State’s oldest continuously operating saloon (they’ve been pouring beer there since 1889), which features a very unique footrail and flowing water spittoon that is actually listed as a tributary of the Cle Elum river.
So even though the program supposedly took place in Alaska, those of us who actually knew Roslyn and the Brick knew better; while my personal experience of watching the program was further complicated by the fact that one of the regular characters on the show (General Store owner and operator Ruth-Anne Miller) was played by actress Peg Phillips, who was the mother of Unitarian Universalist minister Elizabeth Greene.
But here’s the point I want to make. The Bull and Finch, the Elliott Bay Bookstore Cafe, and even (or perhaps I should say especially) the Brick are all real places; while “Cheers” and the “Cafe Nervosa” and the quirky little town of Cicely Alaska are not. We know all of THEIR names: Sam, Diane, Frazier, Fleischman -- even though they’re not really real people -- while our own experience of being part of that anonymous, mass-culture audience is essentially one of gathering around the water cooler at work (when the programs are first broadcast) to talk about what we each watched alone in our homes the night before; and then (if we are so inclined) slipping into a subculture of fandom which continues to watch these programs in syndication or on DVD, while collecting ever greater amounts of trivial minutia regarding our chosen virtual communities.
There are in fact REAL Great, Good Places all around us, “Third places” other than home or work where we can enjoy the benefits of an informal public life confident in the knowledge that even if everyone DOESN’T know our names, a few folks might at least recognize our faces. And it makes me feel good that churches, and this church in particular, can sometimes place that role on people’s lives, and connect us to one another in significant, meaningful ways.
But in order to fulfill our FULL potential as authentic communities of faith, churches must also aspire to do much, much more. Local churches are embodiments of the Church Universal, small manifestations of the Kingdom of Heaven here on Earth, participants in the Divine Commonwealth, expressions of “the Beloved Community.” Churches are “communities of memory and hope,” which “revere the past but trust the dawning future more,” and where often generations of faithful souls have congregated publicly to pray to God and to worship together, to take care of one another, and to grow deeper in faith over time....
Today’s message is the second in a series of sermons I plan to preach between now on Easter about “UU DNA” -- those things that are so basic and essential to who we are that they might be thought of as part of our genetic make-up. And today's topic in particular -- Why do Bad Things Happen to Good People? -- is often considered one of the most perplexing problems in Western theology, not only for Christianity, but for Judaism and Islam as well. If God is Good, and All-Powerful and All-Knowing, how can he possibly allow the innocent to suffer? Is suffering somehow punishment of our bad behavior -- perhaps bad behavior were weren’t even fully aware of? -- or are we instead somehow pawns in struggle between the powers of good and the powers of evil, and our suffering less “punishment” for some evil act than merely “collateral damage” in a contest that is ultimately beyond our means to know or understand?
These questions pose challenges for all fundamentally monotheistic faiths, but in many ways they are especially problematic for a faith like ours, which takes its name explicitly from the doctrines that God is One and that All Souls are destined for heaven, and where we sometimes tend to spell “God” with two “O’s” and “devil” without a “D,” (think about that one for a second) and where evil itself is often dismissed as merely an absence of good, rather than a real force in its own right. Hence, “Afflictive Dispensations of Divine Providence” -- it’s not that the dispensations themselves were bad, it’s just that we experienced them in an afflictive way.
And I suppose it almost goes without saying that if you DON’T believe in a Good, All-Knowing, All-Powerful God in the first place, this problem is a lot less perplexing than if you do. Who’s to say that life is fair, or that the Universe is fundamentally benevolent in its make-up. Suppose the Universe is actually neutral, or even basically hostile and malevolent: what does that say about the problem of evil then? Buddhism tells us that human suffering is the result of our “thirst” for the things of this world that “come into being and pass away,” our attachment to things that are impermanent in nature, and therefore not ours to keep. The only way to escape this attachment is to recognize that it is the source of all our suffering, and to follow the Nobel Eight-Fold path, basically a combination of Right Knowledge, Right Behavior, and Right Mindfulness which allows practitioners to overcome their thirst and thus relieve their suffering, but living an enlightened lifestyle that is “in the world, but not of it.”
And yet, it seems to me, there’s at least one more piece to this puzzle that needs to be looked at. Because even if the Universe isn’t fair, we WANT it to be...or at least somehow expect that it really ought to be fairer than it seems. And this may say as much about us as it does about the Universe itself. Some of it may reflect lessons we’ve learned as members of this society: do unto others as you would have others do unto you, love the Lord your God with all your heart, and love your neighbor as yourself. It may be even simpler than that -- basic childhood lessons about sharing our toys and taking turns, so that everyone gets a chance and no one is left out.
Or suppose that the scientists like Carl Sagan are correct: that we ARE the part of of the Universe that is becoming conscious of itself, and that the ethical standards we create for ourselves do indeed reflect the long “moral arc of the universe,” bending every so slightly toward justice as we, in our growing self-awareness, bend it that way. We may not always get the result we want every time. But by working for justice, we slowly yet consistently make our society a little more fair, even if it doesn’t always live up to the standards we would set for it ourselves.
When I was first diagnosed with cancer, not quite a year ago now, i could have spent an awful lot of time asking myself “Why Me?” And there are all sorts of reasons I could have pointed to, including stupid decisions I made about smoking when I was younger, and a general failure to keep up with good, healthy habits as I grew older and more susceptible to illness. But even thought I could come up with all sorts of good reasons for why I HAD cancer, I couldn’t really explain why I’d “gotten” it -- what (if anything) I had done to “deserve” this disease at this particular moment in my lifetime. And seeing this, I decided not to waste a lot of time worrying about it either. Cancer is something that happened to me, and since I can’t go back and fix that or change it, I’m just going to have to go forward and live with it as best I can, thankfully with a lot of help and support from caring people I have met along the way.
And likewise now, as I look out over this congregation and listen to your joys and concerns, see so many people who are also struggling with issues in your own lives -- perhaps health issues, or financial problems brought about by the current economy, and I just have to hope that you will find here in this community the things you are looking for: the knowledge that it isn’t fair and it’s not your fault, that you shouldn’t take the blame for things that are out of your control, that there are others here to help you, and that you too can still be a help to others even when you’re feeling beaten down yourself. Because you and I are the eyes, and ears, and hands of God, doing God’s good work here in this world as best we can, for as long as we can. And it doesn’t really matter whether anybody knows our name or not....
READING: “Job” from Wishful Thinking: a Seeker’s ABC by Frederick Buechner.
Job is a good man and knows it, as does everybody else, including God. Then one day his cattle are stolen, his servants are killed, and the wind blows down the house where his children happen to be whooping it up at the time, and not one of them lives to tell what it was they thought they had to whoop it up about. But being a good man he says only, “The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.” Even when he comes down with a bad case of boils and his wife advises him t curse God and die, he manages to bite his tongue and say nothing. It’s his friends who finally break the camel’s back. They come to offer their condolences and hang around a full week. When Job finds them still there at the start of the second week, he curses the day he was born. He never quite takes his wife’s advice and curses God, but he comes very close to it. He asks some unpleasant questions:
If God is all he’s cracked up to be, how come houses blow down on innocent people? Why does a good woman die of cancer in her prime while an old man who can’t remember his name or hold his water goes on in a nursing home forever? Why are there so many crooks riding around in Cadillacs and so many children going to bed hungry at night? Jobs friends offer an assortment of theological explanations, but God doesn’t offer one.
God doesn’t explain. He explodes. He asks Job who he thinks he is anyway. He says that to try to explain the kinds of things Job wants explained would be like trying to explain Einstein to a little-neck clam. He also, incidentally, gets off some of the greatest poetry in the Old Testament. “Hast thou entered into the treasures of the snow? Canst thou bind the sweet influences of the Pleiades? Hast thou given the horse strength and clothed his neck with thunder?”
Maybe the reason God doesn’t explain to Job why terrible things happen is that he knows what Job needs isn’t an explanation. Suppose that God did explain. Suppose that God were to say to Job that the reason the cattle were stolen, the crops ruined, and the children killed was thus and so, spelling everything out right down to and including the case of boils Job would have his explanation.
And then what?
Understanding in terms of the divine economy why his children had to die, Job would still have to face their empty chairs at breakfast every morning. Carrying in his pocket straight from the horse’s mouth a complete theological justification of his boils, he would still have to scratch and burn.
God doesn’t reveal his grand design. He reveals himself. He doesn’t show why things are as they are. He shows his face. And Job says, “I had heard of thee by the hearing of the ear, but now my eyes see thee.” Even covered with sores and ashes, he looks oddly like a man who has asked for a crust and been given the whole loaf.
At least for the moment.
at the First Parish Church in Portland, Maine
Sunday February 1st, 2009
OPENING WORDS: from "Of Justice and Conscience” by Theodore Parker
I do not pretend to understand the moral universe; the arc is a long one, my eye reaches but little ways; I cannot calculate the curve and complete the figure by the experience of sight; I can divine it by conscience. And from what I see I am sure it bends towards justice.
***
It’s nice to be back in the pulpit again though, especially after having to ask Will to fill in for me last Sunday, but cause I’d been afflicted earlier in the week with a particularly nasty case of the, the type of which one immediately begins to suppress ones memory of all of the symptoms in hopes of never having to experience them again. And even though I was feeling a lot better by the time Sunday finally rolled around, it still felt reassuring to know that I could call on Will, and still have the opportunity to worship along with everyone else as a member of the congregation, and to hear his thoughts on a topic that has also been of interest to me for a long, long time.
It was particularly interesting to me because of the way Will chose to introduce it. In 1978, shortly after arriving on the East Coast to begin my theological studies at the Harvard Divinity School, I got a part-time job as a Field Education Student Intern at the First and Second Church in Boston’s Back Bay. There were actually several of us student interns at First and Second, not only from Harvard but from other Divinity Schools in the Boston area, and it wasn’t long before we were looking around for a nice, quiet place there in the neighborhood where we might stop and get a drink before catching the subway back to Cambridge, or to Newton Centre or wherever else we might happen to be going. And we eventually settled on a place called “the Bull and Finch,” right there on Beacon Street at the foot of Beacon Hill, and for the next three years that was pretty much our regular hangout whenever we wanted a cold bear at the end of a long day (or maybe a hot Irish Coffee at the end of a very COLD day)....
So imagine my astonishment in 1982, having moved back to Seattle only a year after my graduation and ordination, to discover that my sleepy little neighborhood bar was suddenly the setting of the most popular television program in America! And it only gets stranger. Because ten years later “Cheers” spun-off another series about one of its regular characters, Dr. Frazier Crane, who moves from Boston back to his hometown of Seattle in order to begin a new career as a radio talk-show personality. Frazier and his brother Niles like to meet up at a place called the Cafe Nervosa, a place which looks suspiciously like the basement espresso bar at the Elliott Bay bookstore in Pioneer square, which is one of my favorite SEATTLE hangouts!
Thankfully, they’ve done a little bit better job at avoiding the temptation to try to cash in than the Bull and Finch people did. Still, it’s a little eerie to feel like you’re being stalked cross-country by a Hollywood location scout, especially given the coincidence that one of the OTHER most popular television programs in America that season, “Northern Exposure,” was also being filmed in the Pacific Northwest, in the small town of Roslyn Washington, home of the “Brick” -- Washington State’s oldest continuously operating saloon (they’ve been pouring beer there since 1889), which features a very unique footrail and flowing water spittoon that is actually listed as a tributary of the Cle Elum river.
So even though the program supposedly took place in Alaska, those of us who actually knew Roslyn and the Brick knew better; while my personal experience of watching the program was further complicated by the fact that one of the regular characters on the show (General Store owner and operator Ruth-Anne Miller) was played by actress Peg Phillips, who was the mother of Unitarian Universalist minister Elizabeth Greene.
But here’s the point I want to make. The Bull and Finch, the Elliott Bay Bookstore Cafe, and even (or perhaps I should say especially) the Brick are all real places; while “Cheers” and the “Cafe Nervosa” and the quirky little town of Cicely Alaska are not. We know all of THEIR names: Sam, Diane, Frazier, Fleischman -- even though they’re not really real people -- while our own experience of being part of that anonymous, mass-culture audience is essentially one of gathering around the water cooler at work (when the programs are first broadcast) to talk about what we each watched alone in our homes the night before; and then (if we are so inclined) slipping into a subculture of fandom which continues to watch these programs in syndication or on DVD, while collecting ever greater amounts of trivial minutia regarding our chosen virtual communities.
There are in fact REAL Great, Good Places all around us, “Third places” other than home or work where we can enjoy the benefits of an informal public life confident in the knowledge that even if everyone DOESN’T know our names, a few folks might at least recognize our faces. And it makes me feel good that churches, and this church in particular, can sometimes place that role on people’s lives, and connect us to one another in significant, meaningful ways.
But in order to fulfill our FULL potential as authentic communities of faith, churches must also aspire to do much, much more. Local churches are embodiments of the Church Universal, small manifestations of the Kingdom of Heaven here on Earth, participants in the Divine Commonwealth, expressions of “the Beloved Community.” Churches are “communities of memory and hope,” which “revere the past but trust the dawning future more,” and where often generations of faithful souls have congregated publicly to pray to God and to worship together, to take care of one another, and to grow deeper in faith over time....
Today’s message is the second in a series of sermons I plan to preach between now on Easter about “UU DNA” -- those things that are so basic and essential to who we are that they might be thought of as part of our genetic make-up. And today's topic in particular -- Why do Bad Things Happen to Good People? -- is often considered one of the most perplexing problems in Western theology, not only for Christianity, but for Judaism and Islam as well. If God is Good, and All-Powerful and All-Knowing, how can he possibly allow the innocent to suffer? Is suffering somehow punishment of our bad behavior -- perhaps bad behavior were weren’t even fully aware of? -- or are we instead somehow pawns in struggle between the powers of good and the powers of evil, and our suffering less “punishment” for some evil act than merely “collateral damage” in a contest that is ultimately beyond our means to know or understand?
These questions pose challenges for all fundamentally monotheistic faiths, but in many ways they are especially problematic for a faith like ours, which takes its name explicitly from the doctrines that God is One and that All Souls are destined for heaven, and where we sometimes tend to spell “God” with two “O’s” and “devil” without a “D,” (think about that one for a second) and where evil itself is often dismissed as merely an absence of good, rather than a real force in its own right. Hence, “Afflictive Dispensations of Divine Providence” -- it’s not that the dispensations themselves were bad, it’s just that we experienced them in an afflictive way.
And I suppose it almost goes without saying that if you DON’T believe in a Good, All-Knowing, All-Powerful God in the first place, this problem is a lot less perplexing than if you do. Who’s to say that life is fair, or that the Universe is fundamentally benevolent in its make-up. Suppose the Universe is actually neutral, or even basically hostile and malevolent: what does that say about the problem of evil then? Buddhism tells us that human suffering is the result of our “thirst” for the things of this world that “come into being and pass away,” our attachment to things that are impermanent in nature, and therefore not ours to keep. The only way to escape this attachment is to recognize that it is the source of all our suffering, and to follow the Nobel Eight-Fold path, basically a combination of Right Knowledge, Right Behavior, and Right Mindfulness which allows practitioners to overcome their thirst and thus relieve their suffering, but living an enlightened lifestyle that is “in the world, but not of it.”
And yet, it seems to me, there’s at least one more piece to this puzzle that needs to be looked at. Because even if the Universe isn’t fair, we WANT it to be...or at least somehow expect that it really ought to be fairer than it seems. And this may say as much about us as it does about the Universe itself. Some of it may reflect lessons we’ve learned as members of this society: do unto others as you would have others do unto you, love the Lord your God with all your heart, and love your neighbor as yourself. It may be even simpler than that -- basic childhood lessons about sharing our toys and taking turns, so that everyone gets a chance and no one is left out.
Or suppose that the scientists like Carl Sagan are correct: that we ARE the part of of the Universe that is becoming conscious of itself, and that the ethical standards we create for ourselves do indeed reflect the long “moral arc of the universe,” bending every so slightly toward justice as we, in our growing self-awareness, bend it that way. We may not always get the result we want every time. But by working for justice, we slowly yet consistently make our society a little more fair, even if it doesn’t always live up to the standards we would set for it ourselves.
When I was first diagnosed with cancer, not quite a year ago now, i could have spent an awful lot of time asking myself “Why Me?” And there are all sorts of reasons I could have pointed to, including stupid decisions I made about smoking when I was younger, and a general failure to keep up with good, healthy habits as I grew older and more susceptible to illness. But even thought I could come up with all sorts of good reasons for why I HAD cancer, I couldn’t really explain why I’d “gotten” it -- what (if anything) I had done to “deserve” this disease at this particular moment in my lifetime. And seeing this, I decided not to waste a lot of time worrying about it either. Cancer is something that happened to me, and since I can’t go back and fix that or change it, I’m just going to have to go forward and live with it as best I can, thankfully with a lot of help and support from caring people I have met along the way.
And likewise now, as I look out over this congregation and listen to your joys and concerns, see so many people who are also struggling with issues in your own lives -- perhaps health issues, or financial problems brought about by the current economy, and I just have to hope that you will find here in this community the things you are looking for: the knowledge that it isn’t fair and it’s not your fault, that you shouldn’t take the blame for things that are out of your control, that there are others here to help you, and that you too can still be a help to others even when you’re feeling beaten down yourself. Because you and I are the eyes, and ears, and hands of God, doing God’s good work here in this world as best we can, for as long as we can. And it doesn’t really matter whether anybody knows our name or not....
READING: “Job” from Wishful Thinking: a Seeker’s ABC by Frederick Buechner.
Job is a good man and knows it, as does everybody else, including God. Then one day his cattle are stolen, his servants are killed, and the wind blows down the house where his children happen to be whooping it up at the time, and not one of them lives to tell what it was they thought they had to whoop it up about. But being a good man he says only, “The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.” Even when he comes down with a bad case of boils and his wife advises him t curse God and die, he manages to bite his tongue and say nothing. It’s his friends who finally break the camel’s back. They come to offer their condolences and hang around a full week. When Job finds them still there at the start of the second week, he curses the day he was born. He never quite takes his wife’s advice and curses God, but he comes very close to it. He asks some unpleasant questions:
If God is all he’s cracked up to be, how come houses blow down on innocent people? Why does a good woman die of cancer in her prime while an old man who can’t remember his name or hold his water goes on in a nursing home forever? Why are there so many crooks riding around in Cadillacs and so many children going to bed hungry at night? Jobs friends offer an assortment of theological explanations, but God doesn’t offer one.
God doesn’t explain. He explodes. He asks Job who he thinks he is anyway. He says that to try to explain the kinds of things Job wants explained would be like trying to explain Einstein to a little-neck clam. He also, incidentally, gets off some of the greatest poetry in the Old Testament. “Hast thou entered into the treasures of the snow? Canst thou bind the sweet influences of the Pleiades? Hast thou given the horse strength and clothed his neck with thunder?”
Maybe the reason God doesn’t explain to Job why terrible things happen is that he knows what Job needs isn’t an explanation. Suppose that God did explain. Suppose that God were to say to Job that the reason the cattle were stolen, the crops ruined, and the children killed was thus and so, spelling everything out right down to and including the case of boils Job would have his explanation.
And then what?
Understanding in terms of the divine economy why his children had to die, Job would still have to face their empty chairs at breakfast every morning. Carrying in his pocket straight from the horse’s mouth a complete theological justification of his boils, he would still have to scratch and burn.
God doesn’t reveal his grand design. He reveals himself. He doesn’t show why things are as they are. He shows his face. And Job says, “I had heard of thee by the hearing of the ear, but now my eyes see thee.” Even covered with sores and ashes, he looks oddly like a man who has asked for a crust and been given the whole loaf.
At least for the moment.
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